There was a free spot next to the window. It was the type where you had two seats next to each other and although normally she would have strongly preferred a single seat where you had no possibility of ending up in an awkward situation - having to have to ask the person next to you to give way in the event of wanting to get out before they did - she decided it did not matter now as she had nowhere in particular to go. In fact her current state of mind gave O reason to believe she would be sitting in the carriage for quite a while. Quite possibly until the tram would stop running even, so by that time the odds were that the seat next to her would be empty again.
O sat down, nudging herself close to the wall so that she could feel the even surface supporting her, placed her bag on her lap and looked out of the window. The doors of the tram then closed accompanied with that familiar beeping sound and the tram budged forward, its electrical humming in perfect sync with the sensation of sliding forward. The afternoon sun had already dropped quite low and shone straight into her eyes making her squint, but O knew she didn't have her sunglasses with her. This irritated O a bit but then again, a lot of things irritated her these days so she paid no particular attention to this annoyance; it just slipped in and out of her mind like a fish that makes a jump out of the water to catch a fly. Instead she tried to look away from the direction of the sun and thus soothe her annoyance; and if O noticed the similarity between that small moment and the larger metaphor of her life she actively chose not to think about it.
The tram rolled onwards and O in it, through the streets and around the curves, interrupted only by tram stops and the occasional traffic lights. She very much liked the feeling of being transported from this moment to the next; O imagined how her existence moved through the fabric of time and space. None of this you could have read from her face though as she stared out of the window almost feverishly, completely cut off from everyone else in the tram. The truth was she could have not bore to meet the eyes of another human being right now as it might have well been the needle that poked through a balloon, the thin layer of whatever that kept her together. And as O really didn't want to explode there, leak all over the filthy tram floor and have people looking the other way in a shared awkwardness, she stared out into nothing and everything, and the soundtrack of the tram moving forward gave her something to focus on.
The scenery changed outside the window and O recognized all of it. It was true that she had been away for a long time but things had not changed that much; in a human lifetime nothing ever does. You can say it does, you can even think it does; but it doesn't. The core remains the same and this applies to everything and everyone, and if you say you have changed you are either a liar or a fool.
She, of all people, should know this.
The tram stopped and she saw a man and a woman stepping in. Maybe they were a couple, maybe not, O really could have not cared less because really, why on earth would she have. They sat down on the seats in front of her and immediately she smelled the alcohol oozing out of their pours; the pungent odour did not exactly make her feel sick but she wasn't pleased about it either. Yet O felt it would have been rude of her to change seats - why she felt the need to be excessively polite to these strangers she did not know - but she remained where she was. O tried to breathe through her mouth rather than her nose in the somewhat failed attempt to escape the smell which awoke memories she didn't want to think about now. The couple conversed of something rather irrelevant O didn't want to listen to but what choice did she have, they were so close and their drooping voices swirled around her head like drunk bees. So even if she didn't want to O suddenly knew a lot about the lives of these two people she would never see again, well not a lot but too much anyway, and it occurred to O as her irritation grew that her own history would have been equally annoying for someone else to listen to even if for O it was the most relevant thing ever.
But such is life, she reckoned, and inhaled through her parted lips.
She didn't know how long she had sat in the tram when she finally decided to get off. O noticed it had turned dark outside so it must had been a good while; judging by the tension she felt in her shoulders and back due to clutching the bag on her lap O guessed the amount of hours to be at least three. She straightened her back, slowly and carefully, and stood up, moving towards the door with caution so as not to fall on her back like a beetle and embarrass herself. There was only few people in the carriage now and none of them paid particular attention to her. When the carriage came into a stop she pushed the button and stepped out with haste, like she would have not just voluntarily spent hours in the very same vehicle.
But this was exactly how she was; and by now she had learnt to live with it. Most of the time.
The fresh, cool night air hit her like an open palm to the face, bringing her back into this reality that was not the same at all as in the tram. She stood there for a while, on the street, and reconstructed herself like she had once seen in a film a robot from the future do; all the little pieces of O that had wandered off during the lengthy ride crawled back and she was able to recreate herself again. Certain parts, faulty parts, she hid; certain parts she placed on the outside so that they would catch the attention of any observer the first. They didn't really fit any more, at least not in the same way they had used to, and maybe they were a bit worn out too; but that is where O put them anyway because she knew no other way to make herself.
When she eventually felt ready O looked around to see where she was and how she would get home from there; and yes indeed it had been a great night with friends and maybe they would get together again soon.
.JPG)
No comments:
Post a Comment